I’ve always liked the Arndale Food Market - it’s proper. Proper butchers, proper fishmongers, proper grocers and proper, independent Manchester street food traders doing a roaring trade with the shopping and lunchtime crowds - so much so that the food offering has recently expanded into the market’s south side.

This overspill area, where La Bandera has bravely planted its flag, is a bit of a sorry sight though.

A handful of food stalls huddle apologetically around six slightly sticky tables, shoehorned in between jewellers, a tattoo studio, a T-shirt printing shop and a blinking neon sign advertising 3D lipo. La Boqueria this is not.

Manchester Arndale Market's south side

It’s inescapably the Arndale, despite La Bandera’s best attempts to cheer up the forlorn space with its colourful Spanish tiling and music.

Opened just before Christmas by the owners of the original Ridgefield restaurant, La Bandera at the Market is overseen by Alberto Ruiz Murillo, a former sous chef at Michelin-starred chef David Muñoz’s street food concept restaurant Street XO in Madrid, and promises a ‘fresh, modern take on Spanish street food’.

When we visit, that includes grilled wild hake with thyme and tomatoes and an Asian chicken special that seems as lost on this menu as this stall does in here. Both come served with rice and salad in boxes streaked with violent slashes of sriracha. They look like tiny crime scenes.

Grilled hake with tomatoes and thyme

It’s a crime against that hake, for sure, drowning out the delicate flavours of an otherwise beautifully cooked piece of fish: flaky and fragant with a thyme-scented tomato salsa and caper-studded herb salad scattered on top.

The fiery Thai sauce makes much more sense with the chicken: succulent chunks of breast meat marinated in south Asian spices - turmeric and coriander, I think, stir-fried with a hint of chilli and coconut. It’s a lovely dish, but it still feels misplaced.

Then again, next door, there's an Italian cafe serving 'curry pasta'. I'm glad I took my Italian mother-in-law-to-be here and not there. She loved the chicken.

Asian chicken

A side order of patatas bravas (£3) are fresh out of the fryer and as crisp as they come, smothered with a silky, golden allioli. A smoky puddle of pimentón de la vera oil underneath takes the place of the more familiar tomato sauce in this Catalan version, but there’s too much of it for me - they’re swimming in the stuff.

For fresh, fast food on the go, there’s still much to recommend La Bandera at the Market though. The staff are endearingly sweet and you can’t knock the prices - £6 for both those mains, including a soft drink, although we went for a can of Alambhra beer and a glass of white Rioja for £3 apiece.

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I’ll be tempted back by the rest of the menu. That slow-cooked oxtail in rioja (£5.50) is calling out to me, and there’s a boccadilleria serving Spanish sandwiches, including calamari in a squid ink black bun (£4).

The expansion of the food market signals a renewed focus on food at Manchester Arndale, along with the coming redevelopment of Hallé Square into a new restaurant quarter for the shopping centre - but there’s still work to do to make the south side a welcoming place to eat.

As the Mackie Mayor reawakens on its doorstep, it’s going to face some serious rivalry.